[music]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, New York and New Jersey's year-in-review with the WNYC/Gothamist editors roundtable. With us now are David Cruz, editor of the WNYC/Gothamist People & Power desk; Josefa Velásquez, our economics and equity editor; and Louis Hochman, our New Jersey and the suburbs editor. David, Josefa, Louis, Happy New Year, and thanks for coming on the show.
Josefa Velásquez: Thank you.
David Cruz: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Let's just dive right in. David, no surprise, you identified Mayor Adams' battle against crime as one of the top stories that your People & Power desk has covered this year. Liz Kim, who reports to you, wrote an article that concluded the results have been mixed. How would you start to describe mixed?
David Cruz: Well, Brian, before I get into that, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the work from my desk came as you mentioned from Elizabeth Kim, Jon Campbell, and Brigid Bergin. They really dedicated themselves greatly to the beat. I really wanted to acknowledge them before I dive into the question. To answer your question, results have been mixed with regards to crime.
Murders and shootings are down when you look at the seven major crime indexes, but everything else is up. Notably burglary, robbery, and grand theft auto. Adams might need another year to see these crime numbers dip with the caveat that it can't be accomplished like the days of Giuliani or even Bloomberg. As far as we've seen, crime has a ripple effect. Notably, the fact that Adams wants to bring down crime in the hopes of jumpstarting the economy, and he can't have a thriving economy, say, for example, tourism, if crime is high.
Politically, he's trying to placate the NYPD as he fends off against progressive Democrats, who really want there to be greater alternatives to the old ways of stopping crime. It'll likely be a continuing trend where we'll see some of the categories down. Others will likely be up. At this point, it's not like a light switch. You can't have crime just suddenly drop once the new mayor comes in. It'll likely take some time for sure.
Brian Lehrer: Josefa, for you, as economics and equity editor, one of the stories your department covered this year was Mayor Adams' sweeps of homeless encampments, an average of 14 encampments closed per day from March through October, involving more than 2,000 unhoused New Yorkers, but the sweeps resulted in only 115 people entering shelters. Those are the city's own numbers, the mayor's own numbers.
The mayor framed the sweeps as in the interest of the people living in the encampments themselves. Same thing with his involuntary hospitalization policy for people seen as incapable of taking care of themselves, but how much are these policies also, trying to do what David was just talking about, fight the perception by others that the city is becoming seedy and dangerous?
Josefa Velásquez: This is a mayor who is really coming to New York in a time of crisis, right? We've got the pandemic, rise in crime, rise in unemployment, a downturn in tourism, so really what he needs to tackle now is the perception of New York City to lower back businesses, to lower back workers who rather work from their home than be in the office five days a week.
What the mayor has really tried to do is be a mayor of action, someone who's not going to sit back idly and wait for things to happen. While, yes, the numbers show that some of his policies are, I don't want to say, falling flat but aren't achieving their desired goals, it is something that he can say that he is doing, that he is actively trying to fix the situation of the rise in homelessness, and particularly street homelessness.
Brian Lehrer: Why do so few people from the encampments who are offered beds in city shelters take them? It was one thing when the story was new back in March or so and the first sweeps were taking place. Not many people were accepting beds and shelters. It's another thing now that we have stats from March all the way through October that the city itself released. Why are so few people taking beds indoors that they're being offered?
Josefa Velásquez: Chau Lam, our homelessness and poverty reporter, went out on the street and asked that very same question. Why are people living on the streets? The overwhelming consensus is safety. A lot of folks who rather create encampments, live on the subways, live in parks, say that it all comes down to safety in the shelter system. They don't feel safe in congregate settings. A lot of them that she spoke to had mentioned that they were mugged. Their belongings were stolen.
Quite frankly, they rather tough it out on the street than live in some of these congregate settings. One of the other things is just that the shelter system as a whole is overwhelmingly populated with people and folks who have different needs, right? You have folks that are struggling with mental illness, substance use issues. One of the resounding things that she had come back with was she talked to a man who was living on the street and he said, "I don't need a lot of help. I just need some help."
How much better the shelter system would be if the city provided some semblance of normalcy, whether it is an apartment or a studio or even a room where it wasn't dorm-style barracks, where people can have something to call their own? Just those two things were the overwhelming consensus among the folks that she's talked to. Safety. They want to feel safe and they want to have a place to call their own, to come home to. All they need is a little bit of help to get them back on their feet.
Brian Lehrer: It's kind of a tragic two-step, although you're suggesting there are answers and solutions if only the city and state could implement them. A lot of people fear for their safety because there are a lot of unhoused people on the streets. A lot of the unhoused people don't take the shelter beds because they fear for their safety going there. Louis, for you as our New Jersey and the suburbs editor, speaking of extreme housing stories, Karen Yi from your department reported on New Jersey and still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ida from last year, including very few who would seem to qualify for extended housing from FEMA actually getting it. How is Ida still affecting New Jersey?
Louis Hochman: Well, there are a number of people who are still either out of their homes or living in what seemed to be unsafe homes. There were something like 19,500 displaced residents in New Jersey and New York combined who got initially from FEMA. That goes for about two months. They're entitled if they still have a housing problem and they're not getting aid elsewhere up to another 18 months, but fewer than 300 of those people, so about 1.5% actually got it. Karen Yi's reporting found this.
If you want to compare it, for instance, to Sandy in New Jersey, something like 10% of the people who got the initial aid went on to keep getting that extended aid. Karen asked FEMA, "Well, how many people applied for extended aid?" FEMA actually couldn't give us a hard number. Some residents tell us they were forced to take on debt or stay in uninhabitable homes. Karen spoke to one woman whose ranch home was completely inundated. She wound up spending like $26,000 on rent over the next year.
When she couldn't afford that anymore, she moved back into her home that didn't have a working kitchen, where she couldn't cook for her kids. The housing advocates that we've spoken to say that many of the people they work with aren't even aware they could apply for longer aid. They're supposed to get notified automatically. Many are saying that just didn't happen. Now, Governor Murphy's office and several legislators are pushing for some answers to what exactly happened. Why isn't this aid connecting with people?
Brian Lehrer: I want to take a phone call related to the sweeps we were talking about. Actually, the Adams administration would certainly say that it is not a sweep. Their new policy of involuntary hospitalization for people who appear to be incapable of taking care of themselves, and it only applies to maybe a few hundred people in the whole city. They don't want it seen as a sweep. Here's Diana in Brooklyn, an ER doctor calling in, I think, about that. Diana, you're on WNYC. Hello.
Diana: Hi. Can you hear me okay?
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
Diana: There have been a few things that we've noticed. The first thing is that the code blue, which is supposed to override the limits of the number of people, was not being honored two days ago. I had homeless people who called ambulances to get brought into the emergency room because they went to the shelter, which should have allowed them to at least just be inside and override the cap and they were sent away. The other thing that speaking with the EMTs who are bringing--
Brian Lehrer: Let me just be clear for our listeners. In that case, you're not talking about the involuntary hospitalization. You're talking about people who wanted to get out of the cold?
Diana: Yes, though I can say about the involuntary hospitalization, a point that seems to be missed. I work at one of the city hospitals that has one of the major psychiatric emergency rooms. One of the things that seem to be missed is that adherence to medication requires a support system more than a couple of days. It requires a shelter where people who do need medication can be supported with that. Unless we fund some system for a long term many months like time to adjust Medicaid--
Brian Lehrer: Oh, did we lose your line? I think we lost Diana mid-call, but a very, very important call. Josefa, are you thinking anything there?
Josefa Velásquez: Yes, I'm surprised that the homeless shelters were turning away people during a code-blue night. For the listeners who don't know what that is. Usually, when weather is below freezing, that eases some of the shelter rules. That allows more people to stay indoors or to come indoors rather and get warmed up. The fact that that wasn't being honored is a huge red flag for me.
Yes, I think in terms of what she said about folks who need medication, that is one of the biggest concerns right now in terms of, how do we house this population? It's also a really expensive one that doesn't see an overnight, immediate gratification. When you want to keep people off of the streets, you do need to provide wraparound services. There are some shelters that do that. Those are called safe havens.
They have more facilities and people and support staff than a typical shelter, but there's not enough of them. Like Diana said, these are expensive and there's a lot more of a process than just medicating someone for 72 hours and then kicking them out of a hospital or trying to put them in a congregate shelter. These are folks that do need to adhere to medication or have the support needed to make sure that their mental health or whatever they're struggling with is on pace.
Brian Lehrer: David Cruz, this keeps coming up that if the city wants to get more people off the streets because of whatever cause they're on the streets, they need a lot more supportive housing, something that's been promised for decades and has never been developed in the numbers of units that have been needed. Not just a place with a bed and a kitchen, but a place that offers supportive services for people who have whatever kind of needs might put them at greater risk of becoming homeless again can access services for those needs.
I've been hearing that this is going to be a major topic for the new session of the state legislature that begins in January because, now, more people are talking about it and more people want it. The people who need the services want it. The people who just want people off the streets want it. What do you see coming down the pike in Albany with respect to this?
David Cruz: Certainly, I think Governor Hochul already made her intentions known that housing will be on her agenda. She hinted at it at several stops and even during an event with The Association for a Better New York. She was with Mayor Eric Adams. Both of them actually announced separate housing plans for both the city and the state. I think when it comes to just having a housing plan in general, Eric Adams just didn't simply have one up until about a couple of weeks ago.
He described what he calls a moonshot goal of building 500,000 housing units over the next decade. Obviously, there's a devil in the details in terms of how he will accomplish such a goal. The fact that both of them, both Hochul and Adams, are putting housing on top of their agenda signals the severity of the issue. I will say, just writ large, I think when it comes to just these ideas that Eric Adams rolls out and I guess with regards to the mental health plan is that part of what we've always questioned when it comes to his policies is that there's very little details in these policies.
Sometimes it's just like they come out and they're a little bit ad hoc. We never quite fully get a great sense of how firmed up these plans are. I think that's one reason why there was so much criticism on Adams's mental health plan, to begin with. With regards to housing, yes, I would definitely see plenty of stories coming out with regards to what exactly Hochul has in store for helping to create housing in New York.
Brian Lehrer: Not just housing, but supportive housing is one of the things we'll definitely be keeping our eyes on, on this show in the new legislative session. It's our New York and New Jersey year-in-review with the WNYC/Gothamist editors roundtable for another little bit. David Cruz, editor of the WNYC/Gothamist People & Power desk. Josefa Velásquez, our economics and equity editor. Louis Hochman, our New Jersey and the suburbs editor. David, let me stay with you and change topics. Your department reported on attrition in city government. More people leaving the municipal workforce in 2022. How big is the wave and does it affect certain agencies the most and certain services that the city provides?
David Cruz: Right. We've been tackling this story really since the beginning of the year. Based on one of Elizabeth Kim's reporting back in March, she had the Independent Budget Office, which is an analysis group that analyzed the city budget. She found that levels for municipal workforce were around 282,000, which is about a 15% drop from the same period at that point. They found it significant given how fast that number has dropped. Not every agency had been uniformly impacted.
Some of the agencies that we highlighted include the law department, which saw a 15% drop, and the health department, which saw a 6% drop. That had notable impacts when it comes to providing services. One of the follow-up stories that Elizabeth Kim had written about was when city-run sexual health clinics closed because of shortages. That had forced a lot of New Yorkers to essentially go elsewhere. Maybe even have some of what they needed to go untreated or just not responded by the city.
That was one other example. Another example was the city law department. They rolled out the Fellows program. That was intended to help fill vacant legal jobs at the city agencies. On top of that, you have a proposal from Eric Adams to cut down staff even further by 3%. There's like a cascading effect that's taking place when it comes to the fact that these city workers are leaving in droves.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we've been talking mostly about what's been going on on the New York side of the river. I want to open up the phones for the last part of this segment. We'll just have time for a few of you. Hello, New Jersey. What's the biggest New Jersey story of the year according to you? What should 2022 be remembered for with respect to news from New Jersey? Hello, New Jersey. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.
I just said in the ID, we are a New York and New Jersey Public Radio and we are, so let's get some New Jersey thoughts in here. Tweet @BrianLehrer or call us, 212-433-WNYC, with a quick hit. We'll just list a few and see what you've got. What's 2022 going to be remembered for or should it be remembered for with respect to news from New Jersey? 212-433-9692.
For Louis Hochman, our New Jersey and the suburbs editor. Louis, we were talking in our previous segment about immigration, the migrant influx from the southern border to the New York-New Jersey area, and other kinds of migration. Your unit has reported on one of the places where relatively new immigrants are finding work. That's New Jersey's booming warehouse industry, though you reported on dangerous working conditions, including three deaths in the state this summer at Amazon facilities. Is the boom largely from Amazon itself as shopping from home is still up compared to pre-pandemic, or what is this booming warehouse industry in New Jersey?
Louis Hochman: Amazon is definitely the most notable and the biggest player. About five years ago, Amazon had something like 5,500 workers in New Jersey. Now, it's closer to 50,000. A New Jersey Policy Perspective report by a Rutgers researcher earlier in the year looked at the data from 2021. That year, Amazon accounted for something like 47% of all of the warehouse employment in the state, but 57% of the serious injuries.
I should say with the three you mentioned, one of those, Amazon was very quick to come out and say they do not believe. In fact, they were pretty resolute that it was not a workplace conditions death that they believe it's because of a personal medical issue that the employee didn't tell supervisors about. It's really not up to Amazon to make that determination in the long run. It's going to be OSHA, which has about six months to make a report, and that should be coming up pretty soon.
Brian Lehrer: There's a move to pass a temp workers' bill of rights in the New Jersey legislature this February, I see. What would that do?
Louis Hochman: That's another one that Karen Yi has been tracking very closely. Right now in New Jersey, temp workers can have deductions taken from their paychecks for things like trips to work or meals. That can effectively take their pay below minimum wage. There's very few workplace protections. This bill would change that. It would require them to be notified where they're going, which they're not always told on the way to a job.
One of the most significant things is it would say that they are entitled to the same sorts of benefits and pay as their permanent employee counterparts on jobs. That is a major sticking point for the staffing agencies. They say that would raise their cost, something like 35%, that big employers that they work with, people like Johnson & Johnson, Amazon, Walmart, Bristol Myers might be inclined to move operations over to Pennsylvania, where they'd have a more attractive environment for their finances.
It's unclear what's going to happen next. This has been through a lot of iterations. The legislature actually passed it twice over the summer because of a technical and clerical issue with the first version. Governor Murphy sent it back mostly because he wanted a stronger enforcement mechanism and some funding, so the legislature got on board. They made those changes. Now, it's been so close on the vote that they've had it punted several times because not every legislator who would support it has been in attendance.
They need 21 votes in the State Senate. It's right on that borderline. One of the supporters pulled back after he heard from a staffing agency some of their concerns, so it's coming up again in February. The lead sponsor, Joe Cryan, tells me he's pretty confident. It's going to move through. He says he has the votes. He just needs enough people to show up for a particular vote, but he thinks it's going to move ahead.
Brian Lehrer: All right, listeners, your story of the year from anywhere in New Jersey. Here is Alejandra in Jersey City. You're on WNYC Hi, Alejandra.
Alejandra: Hi, Brian, longtime listener, first-time caller. I love your show.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you.
Alejandra: Anyways, my biggest news story. I live in Jersey City. For me, the biggest thing this year was Amy DeGise, our councilwoman. She was involved in a hit-and-run. She hasn't gone to court. She hasn't renounced the city council this year. I just wanted to highlight that so that people don't forget that it's important to go vote and make your voice heard, especially at the city level.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Ben in Waldwick, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ben.
Ben: Good morning. Again, longtime listener, first-time caller. My name is Ben. I'm an EMT working in Bergen and Essex County. I have a background in public health. My biggest story for the year that hopefully still comes to fruition is the state legislature is considering raising Medicaid reimbursement to emergency services agencies for transport from about $60 to $200-plus. This would make agencies such as my own, shout-out to Montclair meals unit, more financially sound. We have a statewide system that is struggling to meet staffing, that is struggling to put ambulances on the road, and this goes a long way to ensure financial stability for the system.
Brian Lehrer: Ben, thank you very much. Something that sounds really important that a lot of people probably don't know about. Bob in Parsippany, you're on WNYC Hi, Bob.
Bob: Hi, Brian, how are you?
Brian Lehrer: Good. What'd you got for us today?
Bob: Two issues. One is the impact of market-based affordable housing solutions, which are going to drive suburban school systems and suburban infrastructure in a state of massive decay within 5 or 10 years. These decisions are adding 10% to 15% to 20% to the number of single-family residences in a community, which impacts every bit of the infrastructure. The communities, particularly in Morris County, New Jersey, are just not dealing with the impact.
The other issue is the attempted takeover of school boards by a rather rabid right-wing faction, which wants to take us back to young women dressed in handmaidens tale costumes and little boys in uniform and no comments about sex or woke or anything like that. It's growing. It's going to continue to grow unless people wake up and make sure these people don't get elected.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Bob, and putting both of those things on the table. We've got two minutes left in the segment. Louis, as our New Jersey editor, we could talk about Amy DeGise. In New York, they've got the George Santos story, where this Congressman-elect from Queens and Nassau made up pretty much his whole life story and then got elected. People are talking about, "Can he be kicked out of Congress?"
With Amy DeGise, she was involved in this alleged hit-and-run. The trial is scheduled for a few weeks from now, I think. There's a lack of willingness on the part of the state's leaders, including the governor to do anything about her. What about Bob's last point? We heard about school boards around the country becoming a focal point in the culture war. It's happening in New Jersey?
Louis Hochman: Yes, I think one of the things that we're seeing is like we expect and have seen for years outside political influence in the large cities and, say, like Jersey City. What we're seeing more and more is not just this conservative parent backlash against some of what they don't like in terms of character education or sex education, but also organized influence, also organized financial support creeping more and more into the suburbs. Some of that backlash is around things like the school's sex education guidelines.
One of the points that often gets lost in there is the state does not have a sex education curriculum. It has guidelines and requirements for the curricula that districts develop themselves that says when people need to be familiar with certain concepts, but some of the sample lessons that went out seemed more explicit than parents were comfortable with. That triggered a lot of people's concerns and anxieties.
The state has a fairly new LGBTQ curriculum that talks about, say, the historical achievements of people with various gender identities and sexual identities that hadn't been acknowledged. To the same degree, that's triggered a lot of conservative concerns where the state talks about race at all. It's part of the same national debate where people think that they're seeing critical race theory in schools, which isn't quite what's happening. A lot of misinformation around a lot of these issues. We're also seeing organized efforts to oppose that backlash.
The NJEA, the large teachers' union, which is the largest union in the state and one of the most politically-powerful entities in the state, they were funding ads this summer criticizing extremists in school boards, which then got backlash against the backlash for parents saying, "How dare you call us extremists?" I don't think that's going to die down anytime soon. I think we're going to see more money infused in these elections and whether ostensibly non-partisan elections in the coming year. I think that's just going to hit some sort of boiling point in the next year or two.
Brian Lehrer: Josefa, just 30 seconds left. Just time for a soundbite. Is New York immune from that kind of thing? I haven't heard of it if it's breaking out in the city.
Josefa Velásquez: It's definitely not immune. I would say that maybe it's just happening in the background while there are a lot of other pressing issues at hand. I would certainly think that we're going to see more and more of that, especially on Long Island and Westchester, parts of upstate. That's certainly happening, so I would keep our eyes open, ears peeled, all of those things to see what's going to happen next.
Brian Lehrer: Josefa Velásquez, WNYC/Gothamist's economics and equity editor. David Cruz, our People & Power editor. Louis Hochman, our New Jersey and the suburbs editor. Thank you all three for participating in this New York and New Jersey year-in-review and for your work and for the work of your teams all this year. Thanks a lot.
Josefa Velásquez: Thank you.
David Cruz: Thank you so much.
Louis Hochman: Thank you.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.